Google is changing its ad service to offer discounts to some advertisers while boosting relevancy for publishing partners. With very little fanfare, and following the announcement of Gmail, Google
Thursday unveiled Smart Pricing, a service that monitors ad performance on its publishing partners' Web sites. Through Smart Pricing, Google can track how many conversions result from the ads. If a
search term is less likely to generate a sale, Google plans to reduce the per-click fees it charges those marketers.
"Our technology looks at signals to determine which pages convert more than
others," said Salar Kamangar, Google's director of product management. "We'll charge people less when they convert less well." Google warned its partners Thursday that ad revenues could rise or fall
depending on these convergence rates.
